What Is Sales Funnel Mapping?

This article will teach you how to map out your sales funnel.

It’s a great way to see where you’re going wrong and what needs improvement in your marketing efforts.

With this knowledge, it’ll be easier for you to focus on the right channels that are bringing in customers and weed out those that aren’t worth the effort.

Sales Funnel Mapping: Why is it Important?

It helps in staying in touch with customers who are in the same stage of your funnel.

The touchpoints for each stage vary and if your business owner only knows the touchpoints of the first two stages, they will neglect the awareness stage.

It’s crucial to grasp how your website interacts with each of the stages in a consumer’s journey, because it can help you develop better sales and marketing strategies.

You can try new things at specific points in the funnel to see what works best for you.

It’s also important to funnel mapping out your funnel if you’re looking to target new audiences based on their preferences.

For example, if you notice that men between the age of 18 and 25 prefer visiting your physical store but women prefer staying on your website, it’s time to tailor your advertising specifically to them.

It’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day running of a business. It gives you a bird’s eye view of your entire business.

It shows you where you have been successful and where there is room for improvement.

Most importantly it allows you to be proactive, rather than reactive when it comes to improving customer experience.

Sales Funnel Mapping: What does it do?

Create a map of what is happening as they go from up to down from the top of their business funnel.

It helps entrepreneurs understand where the problem is with their marketing and makes it easier for them to fix those problems.

The funnel mapping can be used in conjunction with other mapping techniques like mind maps, customer journey maps, etc.

Before

Entrepreneurs relied on techniques like surveys or interviews to gather information.

While this is still a good technique, it doesn’t give an immediate analysis of how their customers are feeling.

A common problem many businesses face is that customers go through the entire funnel but do not complete the final step which results in lost sales.

Since the top of the funnel is not mapped, entrepreneurs are unable to understand why customers are leaving.

Too Much Traffic

A typical problem that results from this is having too much traffic to the site, but the majority of visitors do not end up completing a desired action.

This can be due to any number of reasons: offering an inadequate product or service; an unclear value proposition; or poor branding, among others.

Having a funnel mapping tools is good tool for any business because it allows entrepreneurs to understand where they are losing out on sales and assess their entire business model.

By understanding the problems that are occurring at different stages of the funnel, it’s possible for companies to fix those issues.

Furthermore, due to the fact that it allows entrepreneurs to view parts of their business model in aggregate, it’s an excellent way to find patterns within your user behavior.

Easy

Finally, Funnel mapping penetration is very easy.

There is no learning curve as creating sales funnel diagram drag and drop templates.

There are few completely free version mapping tool available online such as Google Drawings and other free tool web based software funnel mapping tools with drag and drop function which can be used to create the sales funnel maps.

Some of the best funnel mapping software offer different plan to cater your specific need.

There offer free plan and paid plans mapping tool.

One of the best tool web based platform go to solution would be Funnelytics offering free templates.

Why you should use Sales Funnel Mapping?

It can be used in conjunction with other mapping techniques like mind maps, customer journey maps, etc.

It’s a good tool for any business because it allows entrepreneurs to understand where they are losing out on sales and assess their entire business model.

Moreover, it is a great way to find patterns within your user behavior as entrepreneurs can look at the whole of their product offering as they work to improve customer experience.

The following are some of the advantages:

• Entrepreneurs able to review their entire business model in general.
• It’s a great approach to discover trends in your user’s behavior.
• It’s critical for small businesses to be aware of where they’re losing sales. It’s also possible for them to address those problems as a result of this information.
• Useful for improving your customer journey. You may test different things at particular stages in the funnel to determine what works best for you.
• Understand where the problem is with their marketing and makes it easier for them to fix those issues.
• Creating a effective sales funnel flows
• Crafting new ideas visually
• Generating funnel ideas

Subcategories

Funnel mapping is used to map out all types of customer interactions.

It’s used to get a better understanding of how customers interact with your website.

The categories are Lead Generation, Product Sale, Service Engagement, Webinar Registration/ Attendee and Ebook Download.

Lead Generation

With Lead Generation categories, you can identify the number of leads you generate through different sources such as social media advertising, public relations adverts and trade show events.

The more leads you have obtained from all these channels combined will lead to greater sales volume in your business.

Product Sale

If the product is not selling or it’s sold at a price that doesn’t cover costs, then something isn’t right with the product.

With the help of mapping, businesses can identify whether there is a problem in any stage of the buying cycle by reviewing it with specific markers for each step in the funnel.

Service Engagement

If you are unable to keep your customers engaged, then they may leave soon after making their purchase.

This happens due to ineffective communication, either with the customer or between departments.

Webinar Registration/ Attendee

When you offer webinar pages on your site, it is important to know how many people register for them and how many people actually show up.

You can use mapping to ensure that this figures are increasing every time you host a webinar.

Ebook Download

A good example for Ebooks is to see whether people sign up, download it or read it.

You can also track the number of downloads and the number who actually read it.

This lets you know if your target audience is interested in the information that you’re providing them free-of-charge.

Acquiring new leads.

How to Map Out A Profitable Sales Funnel for Your Business

The Sales funnel map should cover the entire buying cycle of your customer starting from initial interest, right up until they agree to buy your product.

This stage involves extensive research and can take a few months before they get to the point of becoming your customer.

However, if you know what stage in your funnel process is causing certain problems, you can improve or remove it within this step.

This could be either by rearranging the sequence of steps or automating them in order to increase efficiency.

The reason why its is important is because it helps you to analyze your entire sales process, separate the good from the bad and then improve them using data that has been gathered.

The ‘funnel’ part refers to the visual representation of all these different stages involved in turning a web visitor into a customer.

If you’re currently in the process of creating a website for your business, you need to invest time in creating a funnel that will eventually take customers through each stage.

Within each module in the map, there are different elements that can be put into place to improve its efficiency.

The most common structure would have people going from one box to another via clicking on links.

Type of Business

The funnel map works well for businesses which offer a solution to a problem.

The way you market this will need to be different from another type of business.

Solution

You may choose one or two modules out of the entire funnel, start off with one and end up with the other.

Product

For this product, you will need to use all of the modules in your funnel without missing any out.

That means that it may take a longer time before you get to the point where someone buys your product or service.

Service

If you want people to see how valuable your service is, you need to use the entire map in order to do this.

Subscription

For subscription services, you can build up an automated sales funnel for each phase of your customer journey.

This makes it easier for people to buy into your service at different stages rather than having them go through the entire process just once.

The layer

When you’re making your map, you need to consider how many layers it should have.

The more layers you have, the harder it will be to get people through each one.

This means that it is preferable to have three layers rather than six, even if you’re offering different propositions.

If there are too many layers, not only will it be difficult for you to keep track of the entire process but the customer journey itself will take longer before they actually make a commitment to buy your product or service.

How long should each layer be?

This all depends on how long the average ‘dwell time’ is for your business.

This means that you shouldn’t measure all layers of your map by time, despite appearances.

For example, more than half of people who enter the awareness stage will probably not buy into your product or service.

You should measure the time that people are in each stage of your map by how active they are.

You need to know whether or not people are moving onto the next part of it or if they’re dropping off entirely.

Once you’ve created a rough idea for your funnel, you can start exploring ways on how to improve it.

One layer

If your product/service does not require any additional work on the part of the customer after they’ve purchased it, this is all you will need.

One example for a one-layer funnel is the ice cream cart.

Once you buy an ice cream cone, there’s no additional work or investment expected on your part.

Two layers

If your product/service requires some post-purchase work on the part of the customer, you’ll need to add another layer of information for this.

For example, if you’re writing an ebook, the process might look something like this:

Layer 1: they purchase your offer

Layer 2: they read it and have questions for you

Three layers

The most common type of funnel is three-layered.

Layer 3: product/service delivery

Layer 2: post-delivery follow up and serving the customer needs

Layer 1: pre-delivery nurturing and lead generation. This can be used to build your list, or as a way of bringing customers to your website.

You can see in this example that there are three layers to the funnel.

The first layer is bringing people to your website through methods such as SEO, blogging, etc.

The second layer is when customers receive your product/service, and you begin nurturing them with email follow up (i.e., lead generation).

The final layer of the funnel is bringing people back to your website with offers that are relevant to the first layer.

This example pretty much covers what you need to know about how to map out a profitable sales funnel for your business.

Who Is Your Ideal Customer

It’s important to consider where you might need more than one layer and what type of work each layer would require from the customer.

The 50% rule: Who should the entire process be focused on?

You’ll also need to ask yourself – who is your ‘Ideal customer’?

This means that for every layer you build into your funnel, 50% of the work will be done by the person on that layer.

If your product is only going to be used by one person at a time, this can cause problems and they may not be able to give you as much information about their needs and preferences as you need to provide them with an effective service.

If this happens, you have two options:

1) Find a way to split your offer into several different products that will be used by different people or groups of people,

or

2) Stop trying to do everything for everyone and focus on serving one group really well instead.

The Entire Funnel

All layers of your funnel need to be connected.

You can’t just have a bunch of disjointed parts that lead customers in different directions – they need to flow in parallel and meet at some point.

This is where the entire funnel comes into play: it’s like a map that shows how all of these aspects fit together and come together.

Some sales funnels can be very complex, but that usually means there’s a lot of money to be made in a market by serving a certain audience well.

Sales Funnel Mapping: Conclusion

The funnel mapping process is a critical step in creating an effective online marketing plan.

It’s not just about how many people you can get to your site, but who they are and what stage of the buying cycle they’re at when they arrive.

In order for any strategy to be successful it needs to map back to each customer’s specific goals – which means understanding their motivations and sticking with them from start-to-finish.

With the right funnel mapping software that funnel builder use, you’ll have all the data necessary available on hand so that no time or attention will be wasted on things like trying to figure out where customers were before purchasing something else online.